Blog ads as ironic comment? or just out of the blogger's control?

While procrastinating this afternoon, I stopped by Bitch Ph.D., a blog I look at once in a while just to see what sort of thing she and her colleagues are writing about. I often agree, I often don’t, and I often think that she’s sharing, ah, a bit too much information of the sort that fuels the fires of the Ivan Tribbles of the world.

Anyway, I noticed that she’s sporting a new look on her blog and that includes blog ads on the far right column. Now, I like money as much as the next person (even though a lot of academic-types would prefer to not admit this), and I’ve wondered about the idea of putting up ads on this site. I honestly have no idea how much money I could make off of it, but if I were to clear say $50 a year for leasing the space, that would pay my annual icdsoft bill.

The problem though, as I think is evident with Bitch Ph. D.’s site, is it appears that you have little control of the ads themselves. At least I think that’s the case. For example, on Bitch Ph. D.’s site (at least when I checked it now), there were two ads, one urging people to sign an electronic petition to approve John Robert’s nomination to the Supreme Court and the other for a pro-life group, that seem to me to be at odds with the sort of ideas that are being promoted in the content of the site.

I have no idea how these ads came to be on this site; maybe it is based on sites that bubble up in Google’s rankings for searches on “John Roberts” or “Pro-Life.” And I have no idea how the Bitch Ph. D. crowd feels about these ads (ironic? money is money? who knows?). But if blog ads means that you give up a space on your site to advertise damn near anything, then I think I’ll keep paying the bills myself.

I'm a writer and a professor at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. You can learn more than you want to learn about me by clicking on "about." You can contact me by sending email to skrause at emich dot edu.